Along with the rest of India, I too was taken by surprise at the announcement that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes would no longer be legal tender. I got a number of calls from colleagues that evening, worried about whether this meant that their patients would be unable to seek care or whether their practices would suffer as patients would prioritize their limited cash for other essentials, putting off visits to the doctor that would otherwise have taken place. Well, I had been thinking about this subject even before the announcement.
As India negotiates its slow journey towards becoming a cashless society, the medical community needs to think about what this change means for us. We need an easier means to recover payments from our patients, in a way that is convenient for them as well. The first step is to start developing a habit of asking patients whether or not they wanted to pay…
